We seem to have an influx of angry commenters on Overcoming Bias, offended by Robin Hanson’s posts on gender. Indeed, many of them seem to have decided that Robin Hanson is a faceless representative of some evil class of Men. Ah well, but most people don’t see the overwhelming irony of their lives; and very few humans of either sex make the effort to cross the gap.
In an ideal world, this would be a reasonable comment. In the real world, with the history of male oppression of women that comes with it, there is an asymmetry that means these things are not equivalent.
Most women don’t feel the pain of a history they never experienced- it is not an understandable bias for them to let empathy with said women interefere with their judgement.
Unequal treatment, up to and including that deserving of the label “oppression”, is still ongoing. Even in first world countries. Yes, things have gotten better, but this history is not over.
Alright- most women in the Western world, then. The sort of “opression’ that does exist is mitigated by arguable counter-opression from stereotypes of males and positive discrimination.
Also, any actual examples of “opression”?
EDIT: In addition, it is worth pointing out that a significant part of female submissiveness seems to come from female instincts and real gender differences.
The sort of “opression’ that does exist is mitigated by arguable counter-opression from stereotypes of males and positive discrimination.
It’s not the freaking discrimination olympics.
The two most definitive examples of oppression are from opposite ends of the sex-trade. Although it’s hard to acquire definite statistics, the best estimates of slavery in the U.S. alone range from 20,000 at a given time to 14,000 trafficked per year, with roughly half being used for forced sex (the rest is primarily agriculture, and domestic service). On the other hand, we have the treatment of voluntary prostitutes by the police. There are on the order of 100,000 prostitution arrests per year. About 10% of these arrests are clients, the rest the prostitutes (large majority women, but a significant
number of men.) Studies indicate that roughly 20% of the violence that a prostitute experiences is from police. (http://www.bayswan.org/stats.html). And of course it’s quite common for prostitutes to give freebies to police to get out of being arrested, and the illegality of prostitution makes it rather difficult to report rape, or have it be taken seriously. (http://www.bayswan.org/polpage.html).
Of course, this only happens to a small minority of women. And yes, men are trafficked too. There’s still a disparate impact, and this should count as oppression by any standard.
Generally as the abuse and discrimination get milder, they also cover a wider cross-section. Short of these gross abuses, the common complaints are rape and sexual assault, and that allegations of these are not always treated seriously (about 1-in-6 women in the U.S. will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime, roughly 250000 per year. 90% of rape victims are women, 99% of assailants are men.) There is uncertainty in these statistics as well, but even a false rape reporting percentage of the unbelievably high 50% still leaves the statistics rather horrible.
This is all without diving into differences in matters of employment, that is rather difficult to affirmatively establish discrimination in any given case, and given the variance in choices between men and women also certainly means that statistics can be misleading as to how much is flat out discrimination.
In addition, it is worth pointing out that a significant part of female submissiveness seems to come from female instincts and real gender differences.
Possibly true, possibly not. Extremely hard to test for, and not terribly relevant unless you think that submissiveness somehow excuses oppression.
1- Treatment of prostitutes at least partially comes down to disdain of prostitutes, not opression of women.
2- Assuming (as seems to be the case) that it is less than 0.1% of the population being trafficked, then it is minor compared to behaviour in general society.
3- Rape statistics are far lower outside the U.S.
4- I meant that female’s instincts are to accept things such as men having higher social status due to hunter-gatherer programming- these have to be dealt with in both genders, but it does mean that to the extent fault can be talked about some is theirs.
In addition, to the extent that there is opression both ways it means that to a lesser extent people can claim one gender is being discriminated against (both having social advantages and disadvantages)- this is not entirely true, but is more so than historically.
We seem to have an influx of angry commenters on Overcoming Bias, offended by Robin Hanson’s posts on gender. Indeed, many of them seem to have decided that Robin Hanson is a faceless representative of some evil class of Men. Ah well, but most people don’t see the overwhelming irony of their lives; and very few humans of either sex make the effort to cross the gap.
In an ideal world, this would be a reasonable comment. In the real world, with the history of male oppression of women that comes with it, there is an asymmetry that means these things are not equivalent.
Most women don’t feel the pain of a history they never experienced- it is not an understandable bias for them to let empathy with said women interefere with their judgement.
Unequal treatment, up to and including that deserving of the label “oppression”, is still ongoing. Even in first world countries. Yes, things have gotten better, but this history is not over.
Alright- most women in the Western world, then. The sort of “opression’ that does exist is mitigated by arguable counter-opression from stereotypes of males and positive discrimination.
Also, any actual examples of “opression”?
EDIT: In addition, it is worth pointing out that a significant part of female submissiveness seems to come from female instincts and real gender differences.
It’s not the freaking discrimination olympics.
The two most definitive examples of oppression are from opposite ends of the sex-trade. Although it’s hard to acquire definite statistics, the best estimates of slavery in the U.S. alone range from 20,000 at a given time to 14,000 trafficked per year, with roughly half being used for forced sex (the rest is primarily agriculture, and domestic service). On the other hand, we have the treatment of voluntary prostitutes by the police. There are on the order of 100,000 prostitution arrests per year. About 10% of these arrests are clients, the rest the prostitutes (large majority women, but a significant number of men.) Studies indicate that roughly 20% of the violence that a prostitute experiences is from police. (http://www.bayswan.org/stats.html). And of course it’s quite common for prostitutes to give freebies to police to get out of being arrested, and the illegality of prostitution makes it rather difficult to report rape, or have it be taken seriously. (http://www.bayswan.org/polpage.html).
Of course, this only happens to a small minority of women. And yes, men are trafficked too. There’s still a disparate impact, and this should count as oppression by any standard.
Generally as the abuse and discrimination get milder, they also cover a wider cross-section. Short of these gross abuses, the common complaints are rape and sexual assault, and that allegations of these are not always treated seriously (about 1-in-6 women in the U.S. will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime, roughly 250000 per year. 90% of rape victims are women, 99% of assailants are men.) There is uncertainty in these statistics as well, but even a false rape reporting percentage of the unbelievably high 50% still leaves the statistics rather horrible.
This is all without diving into differences in matters of employment, that is rather difficult to affirmatively establish discrimination in any given case, and given the variance in choices between men and women also certainly means that statistics can be misleading as to how much is flat out discrimination.
Possibly true, possibly not. Extremely hard to test for, and not terribly relevant unless you think that submissiveness somehow excuses oppression.
1- Treatment of prostitutes at least partially comes down to disdain of prostitutes, not opression of women.
2- Assuming (as seems to be the case) that it is less than 0.1% of the population being trafficked, then it is minor compared to behaviour in general society.
3- Rape statistics are far lower outside the U.S.
4- I meant that female’s instincts are to accept things such as men having higher social status due to hunter-gatherer programming- these have to be dealt with in both genders, but it does mean that to the extent fault can be talked about some is theirs.
In addition, to the extent that there is opression both ways it means that to a lesser extent people can claim one gender is being discriminated against (both having social advantages and disadvantages)- this is not entirely true, but is more so than historically.